"Lisey, I can't believe it!"
"Seeing's believing," Lisey said. "Get your ass up to Acadia in Derry and see for yourself."
"Lisey, what's that noise? It sounds like you're in a shower! "
"Hydrotherapy, right across the hall!" Lisey said, lying giddily and thinking We'll never be able to explain this later - not in a million years. "They've got the door open and it's awfully noisy."
For a moment there was no sound but the steadily downpouring rain. Then Darla said,
"If she's really all right, maybe Canty and I could go to the Snow Squall anyway. It's a long drive up to Derry and we're both famished."
For a moment Lisey was furious with her, then could almost have punched herself in the eye for feeling that way. The longer they took, the better - wasn't that right? Yet still, the put-upon petulance she heard in Darla's voice made Lisey feel a little sick to her stomach. And that was also the sister thing, she supposed.
"Sure, why not?" she said, and made a thumb-and-forefinger circle at Amanda, who smiled back and nodded. "We're not going anywhere, Darl."
Except maybe to Boo'ya Moon, to get rid of a dead lunatic. If we're lucky, that is. If things break our way.
"Can you put Manda on again?" Darla still sounded peeved, as if she'd never seen that dreadful catatonic heaviness and now suspected Amanda had been faking all along.
"Canty wants to talk to her."
"You bet," Lisey said, and mouthed Cantata to Amanda as she handed the phone back. Amanda assured Canty repeatedly that yes, she was all right, and yes, it was a miracle; no, she didn't mind a bit if Canty and Darla went through with their original plan for lunch at the Snow Squall, and no, she most definitely didn't need them to divert to Castle View and pick up anything at her house. She had everything she needed, Lisey had taken care of that.
Toward the end of the conversation the rain stopped all at once, without the slightest slackening, as if God had turned off a faucet in the sky, and Lisey was struck by a queer idea: this was how it rained in Boo'ya Moon, in quick, furious, off-and-on showers. I've left it behind, but not very far, she thought, and realized that sweet, clean taste was still in her mouth.
As Amanda told Cantata that she loved her and then broke the connection, an improbable shaft of humid June sunlight broke through the clouds and another rainbow formed in the sky, this one closer, shining above Castle Lake. Like a promise, Lisey thought. The kind you want to believe but don't quite trust.
8
Amanda's murmuring voice called her away from her contemplation of the rainbow. Manda was asking Directory Assistance for the Greenlawn number, then writing it with the tip of her finger in the fog forming on the bottom of the Beemer's windshield.
"That'll stay there even after the windshield's completely defogged, you know," Lisey told her when Amanda had rung off. "It'll take Windex to get rid of it. I had a pen in the center console - why didn't you ask?"
"Because I'm catatonic," Amanda said, and held the phone out to her. Lisey only looked at it. "Who am I supposed to call?"
"As if you didn't know."
"Amanda - "
"It has to be you, Lisey. I have no idea who to talk to, or how you even got me in there." She was silent for a moment, twiddling her fingers on the legs of her pajamas. The clouds had closed up again, the day was once more dark, and the rainbow might have been a dream. "Sure I do," she said at last. "Only it wasn't you, it was Scott. He fixed it somehow. Saved me a seat."
Lisey only nodded. She didn't trust herself to say anything.
"When? After the last time I tuned up on myself? After the last time I saw him in Southwind? What he called Boonya Moon?"
Lisey didn't bother to correct her. "He schmoozed a doc named Hugh Alberness. Alberness agreed you were headed for trouble after looking at your records, and when you freaked this time, he examined you and admitted you. You have no memory of that?
Any of it?"
"No."
Lisey took the cell phone and looked at the number on the partially fogged windshield.
"I don't have a clue what to tell him, Manda."
"What would Scott have told him, Little?"